This story was commissioned by the River City Journalism Fund.
In July 2023, the St. Louis Board of Alderman passed a bill that progressive policymakers and tenants’ rights activists heralded as a major victory. The Right to Counsel bill—which passed with 11 votes in favor and only one dissenting—laid the groundwork for a system that would pair tenants facing eviction with legal representation. Advocates argue that more tenants having a lawyer is a step towards more people keeping a roof over their heads, and fewer people living on the street.
“I was ecstatic,” said Shuron Jones, a former organizer for the advocacy group Homes for All. “One of the things that we see nationally is that when you get [a Right to Counsel program], it’s almost like an arbiter of even more tenant protections to come, and it definitely makes sure that people stay in their home.”
The St. Louis Right to Counsel program was designed to distribute funds to legal services organizations to defend tenants in court. Aldermen budgeted $285,000 from federal American Rescue Plan Act dollars to begin the program, with plans to scale up using the city’s operating budget. Lawmakers appointed the city’s Department of Human Services to oversee administration, and originally set a target of 1,125 cases in the first year, at a cost just north of $1 million, coming from the city’s general revenue. The goal was to expand to nearly 3,400 cases by its fourth year, coming out to around $5 million that fiscal year.
However, more than one year out, the program is off to a slower start than advocates had hoped for: While lawyers are taking on cases, the program is now being termed as a pilot project. It’s not anywhere close to running at a capacity where the city could say legal representation is a right — at least not yet.
“Priorities shifted after we won,” Jones lamented. “It’s like, we won, and folks were like, ‘OK, that’s the end of it,’ as opposed to saying, ‘We won, OK, this is where the real work starts.’”
What’s now called the Housing Eviction Law Program, or HELP, has allocated $685,000 to Legal Services of Eastern Missouri. In August of 2024, the nonprofit organization got a two-year contract to provide services.
Daniel Buran, an attorney and program director for the Legal Services of Eastern Missouri, told the River City Journalism Fund that the organization took on 58 cases in August, added another 20 in September, and will work on an estimated 520 cases for city tenants over the next two years.
Buran says the program is “off to a promising start,” adding, “LSEM is on track to meet the number of tenants estimated to be served.”
But the contract pays for just a fraction of the volume that lawmakers envisioned at the time of the bill’s passage, and it will ensure representation for only a portion of the eviction cases filed in the city in a given year. Last year, landlords filed 6,402 eviction cases in St. Louis city, with another 4,844 through October this year, according to the St. Louis Circuit Court.
St. Louis has one of the highest eviction filing rates for renters in the nation, according to Princeton University’s Eviction Lab. And when these eviction cases go to court in St. Louis, tenants rarely find clemency; a 2020 Washington University study found that in all 4,934 eviction cases tried in St. Louis city and county in 2012, only two were decided in favor of the tenant—an abysmal .04% success rate for tenants.
A recent report from the Center for American Progress finds that Right to Counsel programs can help tenants win in court and bridge a wide legal gap—nationally, around 86% of civil legal problems for low-income people, including eviction cases, receive insufficient or no help at all.
Asked about concerns around the city’s scaled-back efforts, Mayor Tishaura O. Jones’ office doubled down on the importance of the program, but made clear this is only the program’s “first iteration.”
“This program is designed to give essential legal services to tenants facing eviction,” its statement said. “The first iteration of this proposal is serving as a proof of concept, and I’m happy that we’ll be able to make a life-changing impact on the lives of those who need it most.”
The River City Journalism Fund also requested comment from Aldermanic President Megan Green. Her office pointed to discrepancies in two versions of the establishing legislation.
In February 2023, a bill to appropriate $5 million in federal ARPA funding for Right to Counsel failed to gain traction. The bill that passed five months later articulated that only $285,000 would come from ARPA. The remaining cost was to be paid out of the city’s operating budget.
Green’s office said that rollout of the program was up to the city’s Department of Human Services. That department did not respond to repeated requests for an interview, or even just a comment, over a 10-week period. Green’s office also did not respond to repeated questions last week asking whether any additional money has been allocated to the program this fiscal year beyond the contract with Legal Services of Eastern Missouri. (A Sunshine Law request did not turn up any additional contracts or expenditures through October.)
Advocates want to see the city expand the program to its full potential quickly. As they note, Missouri has a local case study with ample statistics showing that Right to Counsel in St. Louis is not only possible, but can better the lives of tenants. On the other side of the state, Kansas City’s program is finding success.
In 2023, its pilot year, Kansas City provided legal representation for 1,196 residents, and resolved 1,002 of those cases in favor of the tenant or in settlements. “Keeping more than 1,000 Kansas Citians housed,” Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas said in a statement last year, makes it a “vital program” for tenants.
Money, or the lack of, may account for the disparity between the two cities’ ambitions. Each year Kansas City contracts with multiple legal aid organizations, dedicating $2.5 million of their city budget to their program, a sum that casts a shadow over the resources St. Louis has earmarked.
St. Louis voters recently approved another funding source, however. Proposition S — the successful November ballot initiative that establishes a 3% tax on short-term rentals — calls for at least half of its revenue to go to the Affordable Housing Trust Fund, with the rest going to “other affordable housing initiatives such as relocation assistance or counsel eviction defense.”
Green’s office, for one, is hopeful. “[This] additional funding would expand the projected capacity of the RTC program,” they said in a statement, “and provide meaningful support to more renters facing challenges in a tight housing market.”
Whether the money will translate to tangible legal services for everyone who needs it remains to be seen. Asked about the success of Kansas City’s program, Shuron Jones addressed the idea that what happens in other cities can’t work in St. Louis.
“Some of us think that, ‘Oh, [Kansas City] is so different, so we can't learn from them,’” Jones said. But, she added, “That's not true, right?”
She wants to make sure people who oppose programs like Right to Counsel don’t use the city’s limited financial support to their advantage, helping silo advocates and organizers in St. Louis into a loop of inevitable defeat. She has four words of advice for people hoping to see last year’s small legislative win translate into real change.
Said Jones, “Keep the pressure on.”
This story was commissioned by the River City Journalism Fund, which seeks to advance local journalism in St. Louis. See rcjf.org for more info.
